An Eclectic Journal of Opinion, History, Poetry and General Bloviating

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Once Upon a Time on the Moon

As Americans
and countless others around the world stayed glued to their televisions, Astronaut Neil Armstrong became the
first man to set foot on the face of the Moon
on July 20, 1969.Armstrong, the
commander of the Apollo 11 mission
climbed down a ladder from the landing
craft Eagle to the surface in the
Sea of Tranquility at 10:56 P.M. Eastern Day Light Time.

As he climbed down he repeated a carefully
constructed statement on what he knew would be a historic occasion.Viewers at home heard him say, “That’s one
small step for man, one giant step for mankind.”Armstrong would later insist he said “one
small step for a man” and that the article had simply not been picked up by the
microphone.It is indicative of
Armstrong’s notoriously detailed mind and insistence on precision that this
misquote has bothered him for years.

The mission famously made good on President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 pledge,
made at the height of the Space Race with
the Soviet Union, that the country
would go to the Moon within a decade.

Like Armstrong, the other two members of the
Apollo 11 crew were already veteran astronauts.Pilot Michael Collins stayed
in the main Command Module, Columbia still in orbit while Armstrong and Lunar Module pilot Edwin
“Buzz” Aldrin descended to the surface, a tense trip marked by an alarming
shortage of fuel for the rockets that adjusted the attitude of the craft and
brought it to a landing.Less than 11
seconds of fuel were left on touchdown.

The
business-like Armstrong had been calling off markers on the way down to Mission Control in Houston.Finally he
radioed, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle
has landed.”It took two hours to
prepare to depart the lunar module.Armstrong was soon joined on the surface by Aldrin. The men were on the
surface for a little over two and a half hours.

They shot still
photographs, made a panoramic video of the surroundings then set up the camera
on a tripod to observe their activities.They tested various means of moving about on the surface and settled on
kind of a lope. The two planted an American
Flag stiffened with wire to stay unfurled in the moons windless zero
gravity.They collected rock and soil
samples, but everything was taking longer than expected and Aldrin tried to
speed up the pace of his assignments before being warned that his pulse rate
was climbing.The pair were given an 15
minute extension of planed EVA (Extra
Vehicular Activity) to complete their tasks.

Aldrin re-boarded Eagle first and had some difficulty
getting a bulky box of mineral samples up the ladder.After a night’s sleep, the Eagle lifted off to return to Columbia.Aldrin and Armstrong had been on the Moon for just over 21
hours.They left behind the flag, the
landing craft stairs with a special plaque commemorating the event, and
discarded items from their EVA including their backpacks, lunar overshoes, and
a Hasselblad camera.There was also a small bag of mementos
carried by Aldrin in a suit pocket.

After Columbia splashed down in the Pacific near Wake Island the capsule and astronauts were carried by helicopter
to the deck of the USS Hornet, a famous aircraft carrier from World War II, where they were personally greeted by President Richard Nixon.

With the war in Vietnam still raging, dissent rife at
home, and urban riots exploding in Black
communities, Nixon—and the nation—craved some good news.

The occasion of the
landing has become beyond iconic.Many
historians now regard it as the pinnacle of the American Century.Unsuspected
by most people at the time, the county was on the verge of a long, slow
slide.In the depths of the current
economic miasma, with multiple wars refusing to fade away, the public polarized
to the edge of civil war, and the United States no longer able to send astronauts
into space via American rockets or the retired Space Shuttle fleet, the image of Armstrong on the Moon is a reminder
of when we as a nation could do things, big things.